Just 18 months after his arm was shattered by a Taliban bullet, Graeme Lothian
has recovered enough to start painting again and finish his work on British
forces fighting in Helmand.

A war artist who feared he would never paint again after a Taliban bullet smashed his arm has recovered enough to complete and publish his work showing the British campaign in Afghanistan.

Doctors warned Graeme Lothian the bullet that had left him unable to feel his fingers may have also ended his career as a painter.

Yet just 18 months after he was shot, he was recovered enough to start painting again and finish his work portraying British forces fighting in Helmand.

His new book contains dozens of paintings from four months spent embedded with British troops in the country since 2010. One of the last works, completed while he was recovering, is a painting of the scene of his attack, just moments before he was wounded.

Mr Lothian, 54, of Sevenoaks in Kent, was shot on his fourth tour of the country while he was working alongside soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, The Royal Regiment of Scotland.

As troops got out of their armoured vehicles to talk to Afghan policemen, Mr Lothian walked between the vehicles taking photographs for his work.

Artist Graeme Lothian (Julian Simmonds / The Telegraph)

He said: “In life there’s no gunshot sound like you hear in Hollywood films. I just felt a whack on my arm. My arm flew forward and I saw everything come out of the palm of my hand and my camera was smashed. I knew instantly: ‘Bugger me, I’ve been shot!’”

As Mr Lothian took cover behind an armoured Mastiff truck, soldiers fired back at the gunman in a compound hundreds of yards away. The firing continued and moments later a soldier near him was also wounded, shot through the buttocks.

Mr Lothian clutched his wounded left arm as the firefight continued, fearing a major artery had been severed. He later learned the bullet had hit his elbow, torn along his forearm and passed out through his palm.

He said: “There was a lot of blood, but I saw that it wasn’t spurting out and I started to calm down.”

When the shooting stopped, he was evacuated to the British field hospital in Helmand before being flown to Birmingham.

After months of physiotherapy he is able to use his thumb and forefinger in his left hand, but the other three fingers are useless. The injury has meant he has been forced to adopt a looser style of painting.

On each trip he took thousands of photographs and made notebooks full of sketches and colour guides that could later be worked up into paintings. As well as British soldiers, much of his work shows the Afghan forces and civilians they were working alongside.

'Medical response team' (Graeme Lothian)

While most of the paintings in the book were completed before his injury, after several months of convalescence, he was able to try painting again to complete his work.

He said: “I had my hand all strapped up and had my first go five months after I was shot. When I was done, I thought, it’s a bit rough, there’s lots of things I could do better, but I thought: ‘yes I can do this now’.

He has also been able to begin playing the guitar again, but has had to stop playing golf.

His own career as a soldier in The Parachute Regiment ended in 1987 when he broke his back in parachute training.